Security Vulnerabilities In Cloud Computing

There’s no doubt that cloud computing has drastically transformed the professional scene. Thus, allowing businesses of all kinds to keep up with the fast-paced business environment. The worldwide cloud services industry continues to grow as enterprises throughout all industries embrace cloud technologies. 

Cloud computing also comes with numerous benefits to businesses, including lower operating costs and scalability. However, all of the advantages of the cloud come with a disclaimer, namely cloud vulnerabilities. This is something that should be a concern to every enterprise migrating its operations to the cloud. Security Vulnerabilities In Cloud Computing

What are vulnerabilities?

A vulnerability is a fault in an organization’s security posture caused by weakness, gap, oversight, or other flaws in the cloud security system. This could be due to issues like a misconfigured firewall, an unpatched operating system, or unencrypted data. 

Outsourcing your cloud security to a managed services provider can come as a great help in dealing with cloud security vulnerabilities, risks, and threats. Look for providers in your area such as MSSP Providers Cornerstone Partners and other providers offering such services in Denver. Below are four of the biggest cloud security vulnerabilities in cloud computing and ways you can remedy them.

System Vulnerabilities Due To Misconfigurations

For cybercriminals, cloud storage can offer a valuable supply of stolen data. But despite the high stakes involved, most businesses continue to make the error of misconfiguring cloud storage. This can be costly for you and has resulted in significant losses for many businesses. Some cybercriminals even use advanced technology tools to help them detect and target cloud storage with configuration issues. 

Cloud storage with poor configuration can swiftly grow into a serious cloud security breach when you have cloud storage. There are specialized tools you can use to check the security parameters of cloud storage. These cloud security solutions can help you monitor security setups regularly and uncover vulnerabilities before they become a problem. 

Since you have complete control over who can build and configure cloud resources, ensure you and your Information Technology (IT) team master the configuration settings and options. You can also learn from how your cloud service providers configure their settings.  

Insecure Application User Interfaces (APIs)

APIs are a common way to simplify cloud computing and are commonly used in workplaces. Thus, this makes it simple to share information between two or more programs. APIs, which are popular for their ease of use and potential to increase efficiency, can also create cloud vulnerabilities. 

Cyber attackers can access your company data and execute attacks such as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) or install malware and other threats by exploiting your vulnerable APIs. Also, when conducting API assaults, sophisticated attackers might utilize various techniques to avoid detection. As businesses become more reliant on APIs, the number of assaults targeting them has increased. 

There are a few steps you can take to keep your cloud APIs from such attacks such as:  

  • Carrying out penetration tests that are modeled after API attacks. 
  • Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport layer Security (TLS) encryption when transmitting data.
  • Using Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) to help you strengthen your authentication controls. 
  • Heeding caution while sharing API keys with others and disposing of them when they’re no longer needed. 

These are all preventive methods to safeguard the security of your APIs, but developers must also create APIs that have tighter authentication. 

Inadequate Access Control Measures

Unauthorized users can take advantage of weak or non-existent access control measures to circumvent authentication and authorization to your systems. These malicious actors target weaknesses such as weak passwords. Having strong access control reinforces the current security measures by having additional requirements to existing practices. 

There are several ways you can use to enhance access control security. They include the following: 

  • Enforce strong passwords and mandate password resets regularly. 
  • Make use of multifactor authentication methods.
  • Adopt zero-trust or least-privilege policies. 
  • Use cloud-based access controls for your cloud resources and services instead of using third-party access controls.
  • Require users to re-authenticate themselves regularly. 

End-User Actions

Your business may not fully know how your end-users, mainly employees, are utilizing cloud computing services. If you have no proper internal security practices your teams can easily lose control and become a major source of breaches and security threats. Unfortunately, insiders don’t need to hack or break the security defenses you have in place.  This is because they already have access to the business cloud data.

 Thus, this can result in the loss of intellectual property and confidential information which has serious consequences. To deal with the loss of control over end-user behaviors, you need to integrate practices and guidelines into the business’s data security plan.

Therefore, you must have guidelines for monitoring and surveillance, case escalation, remediation, investigation, post-incidence analysis, and incident response. In addition, ensure regular security awareness training for your teams, even as you enforce cloud security best policies and guidelines.  

Conclusion

Cloud computing is beneficial to a business in many ways. Although, it would be more beneficial if you didn’t overlook its vulnerabilities as well. Thus, ensure to develop a cloud computing security strategy and consider outsourcing your cloud security services.  You could do this with a third-party security services provider for professional management of your cloud services.